I've never needed to do two roundup pieces in one week until now. There's just too many things going on before this weekend's conference featuring The Socialist Perspective on School Reform to wait until next week.I've finally found something the corporate charter-voucher establishment is actually good at, sadly it's institutional racism. Looks like Marco Petruzzi, Steve Barr, and Ben Austin feel like Jim Crow didn't get a fair shake, so they've masterminded a redux! Think my recent piece exposing Green Dot Public [sic] Schools and it's proxy LAPU/PR's uglier side was a little biased? Turns out I was actually understating things.
This amazing UCLA study just released reveals that charter schools violate civil rights, foster racial isolation, and exacerbate segregation. EQUITY OVERLOOKED: CHARTER SCHOOLS AND CIVIL RIGHTS POLICY.
Although not new, Steven Miller and Jack Gerson's The Corporate Surge Against Public Schools made the rounds mid-week. It is one of the most cogent and well presented pieces on school privatization around. It is a must read for anyone concerned with social justice and public education.
Talk about prolific. Kenneth Libby and Dr. Danny Weil manage to get another piece out this week. Charter Management Organizations Take Aim at Los Angeles Unified School District
Education Notes Online has a great piece entitled Hey, SEIU Goons: Break a Egg looking at yellow union tactics. I responded in a comment:
You're certainly dead on with the Silverlake snake-oil salesman -- Steve Barr, and his ability to attract and manipulate company union sycophants. AMU by definition, is a yellow union (its CTA status notwithstanding), and SEIU Local 1877 sits on Green Dot's board. How anyone in organized labor could support the anti-working class corporate charter-voucher establishment, much less legitimize it by sitting on the board of one of the most capricious CMOs in business, is beyond me.
Meanwhile SEIU Local 99 is equivocating to Superintendent Cortines bullying tactics to add more furloughs and layoffs, instead of standing by their sisters and brothers in CSEA and UTLA.
If and when (sadly the later seems more likely), we see an end to public education at the hands of the greedy EMO/CMO corporate charter-voucher establishment and their billionaire backers, we'll be able to thank SEIU for their class collaboration with the most reactionary elements in the so called DLC/DFER crowd.
In a major step towards fulfilling Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman's dystopian future where corporations own everything, liberal turned right wing reactionary State Senator Gloria Romero's SB 592 bill hands the titles of public schools over to Corporate Charters. Dr. Danny Weil exposes the giant corporate bailout in Good News for Charter School Chains in California: Asset Stripping Gives Them Titles to Public School. Dr. Weil is a friend, so I had to comment on his piece:
Thank you Dr. Weil. This is an astonishing update in the battles we are waging against the corporate forces in Los Angeles. It's no wonder the out of state school privatization firm, Synesi Associates, put in bids on all but one of the Los Angeles schools up for grabs under LAUSD VP Yolie Flores Aguilars' Corporate Charter Choice Resolution. Synesi Associates, like all these other corporate vultures see the profitability in stealing the shiny, new, multi-million dollar facilities built by the Los Angeles' working class with the tax money extracted from the Los Angeles working class.
The Marco Petruzzis, Gary Solomons, Steve Barrs, Ben Austins, and Antony Resslers of the corporate charter-voucher establishment are salivating at the opportunity to further cash in on the neoliberal privatization of the last of the "public commons." Their ruling class masters including Broad, Gates, and the Waltons are behind the scenes wringing their hands with glee. All the above enabled by a cast of DLC/DFER characters including Duncan, Romero, Garcia, Villaraigosa, and Flores Aguilar, with nary a peep from their so called right wing opposition. If anyone hasn't figured out why the reactionary right isn't opposed, indeed they're cheerleading, this charter-voucher approach of "reform," it's because these have been the right wing's ideas all along!
Dr. Weil also republished an older piece he'd written entitled Our children have entered a Dickensian World of Nightmarish Proportions this week.
My compañero Jose del Barrio asked everyone to repost this very important information.
In California, 15 years ago those who made over 250,000 a year paid 10% in taxes, those over 500,000 year paid 11%. Today both pay 9.3%! No wonder we dont have money for schools, the rich have not paid their fair share!
Last but not least, Caroline Grannan passes along a poignant letter from one of those people who the corporate world will never understand, an educator: Teacher-trashers can't take away the true rewards -- but they are trying hard.
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